Washington Post: "At the University of Maryland, researchers are designing robots that can learn how to do things by watching people. Instead of being intricately programmed step by step to make a series of movements to accomplish a goal, these robots can figure out how to do it themselves."

Computerworld (30 Jan 2015): "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a series of grants in 2011 to fund research into ways to create a mathematical language that would allow the military to combine data from drone video, cell-phone intercepts, targeting radar and any other available method of sensing the outside world into a single stream of data, but that was only the initial goal." http://www.computerworld.com/article/2878354/darpa-teaches-robots-to-cook-by-watching-youtube.html

It is interesting how military funding is responsible for the roots of this advance.